How can our movement best navigate the tension between maintaining core principles of solidarity and mutual aid, while remaining flexible enough to adapt to the complex, often messy realities of international conflicts like Ukraine, without slipping into oversimplification or dogmatism?
Hold principle like a compass, not a cage. Solidarity and mutual aid are directions, pointing us toward the people absorbing the blast of history. Everything else—tactics, alliances, even slogans—must be provisional, discarded the instant they obstruct that journey. Start with listening infrastructure: encrypted channels linking frontline anarchists, diaspora medics, refugee kitchens. Let their situational reports continually rewrite your analysis, preventing the drift into abstract dogma that disfigures distant conflicts into morality plays.
Next, embed experimentation inside your solidarity. Try a rapid-response fund one month, an underground ambulance corridor the next, an online rumor-busting cell after that. Publicly document what failed and why so the wider movement learns at speed. This iterative rhythm keeps principles alive by proving their utility.
Finally, inoculate against oversimplification through plural narrative. Pair anti-imperialist critiques of NATO with eye-level testimonies from occupied villages. When incompatible truths coexist in your newsletters, supporters train the muscle that resists binary thinking.
Which cherished certainty are you willing to burn today so solidarity can breathe?
I recognize that clinging too tightly to fixed principles risks oversimplifying the complex realities faced by those on the ground. To deepen our solidarity, I need to identify which of our core assumptions—such as the primacy of mutual aid or opposition to imperialism—might be limiting our responsiveness. How can we intentionally create space within our movement to question and, if necessary, dismantle these cherished certainties, ensuring our solidarity remains adaptable and genuinely rooted in the lived experiences of those affected?
Treat your principles as hypotheses, not commandments. Set up a rolling “stress-test council” that meets every new moon. Invite frontline allies—Ukrainian medics, Russian deserters, migrant farmers—to present a concrete dilemma. Then force each principle through three lenses: 1) Does this belief help the people in the story right now? 2) Could clinging to it worsen their situation? 3) What experiment would reveal its current usefulness?
Rotate facilitation so no faction monopolises the interrogation. Make minutes public within 24 hours, highlighting where the principle bent, broke, or held. Over time you build a living archive of tested ideas rather than a shrine of frozen dogma.
Pair this with a “failure budget.” Allocate money and hours each quarter to try tactics your orthodox voices dismiss. If the gamble works, iterate; if it flops, publish the autopsy. Normalising principled risk-taking inoculates the collective against certainty.
Finally, embed story loops. Every donation request must carry a contradictory anecdote that troubles easy narratives, training your listserv to crave nuance.
Ready to put one sacred tenet on the chopping block this month?
If we set aside one of our core certainties for rigorous questioning, how can we create a collective space that invites honest vulnerability—where members feel safe to challenge deeply held beliefs without fear of shame—and how might that openness transform our capacity for genuine solidarity amid complexity?
Begin with a ritual of intentional unknowing. Gather offline, phones sealed in a metal box, and open with a brief silence that acknowledges how certainty hardens into armor. Then invite one member to name the principle under scrutiny in the form of a personal story—“Opposing all militaries meant I hesitated to fund body armor for friends in Kharkiv.” Story first, theory second; narrative disarms ego.
Adopt the Vegas rule: everything shared stays inside the circle unless consent is granted. Pair each speaker with a “clarifying comrade” whose sole task is to ask questions that deepen, never judge. When critique surfaces, direct it at the principle, not the person who voiced it. End by co-drafting a short “What we learned today” note, signed collectively, that circulates to absent comrades and invites further reflection.
This vulnerability excavates hidden ambiguities, turning abstract solidarity into lived empathy. Movements that learn to confess contradictions early build psychic resilience, making them faster at adapting when reality swerves.
Which principle will you risk bringing to the circle first, and who will you trust to probe it?